The Cold War's end was sudden, unpredicted and the seminal event of the latter half of the twentieth century. Since the disintegration of the USSR, debate has centered on whom or what was responsible for the end of the conflict. Perhaps no issue is as controversial as the role the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) played in ending the Cold War. Today, there are three main schools of thought concerning SDI's impact on the end of the Cold War. The first sees the Strategic Defense Initiative as a primary factor in ending the conflict. Another argues the initiative extended the Cold War by creating one more hurdle to the negotiations between the two superpowers. A third school holds that while SDI had a positive impact on ending the Cold War, it was a secondary factor. The third school's position is best supported by the available evidence. "Ninety-nine percent of the Russian people believe that you won the Cold War because of your president's insistence on SDI."2 --Genrikh Trofimenko, one of Russia's leading specialists in international security and politics
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